Wilmington, NC News

Tropics heating up as peak of Hurricane Season approaches

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY)- It will stay quiet around the Carolinas this Labor Day weekend, with beautiful weather making for gorgeous conditions at the beach. But, sure enough, dueling tropical systems in the Atlantic mean the hurricane season is heating up right on schedule.

Our newest system is Tropical Depression Thirteen off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. This will be a difficult system to forecast over the next several days. The problem is, the upper level winds are fairly calm – which is allowing this storm to just sit and meander around the northern Gulf for now. Eventually, this system will move over land. When and where this system comes ashore will actually have a big impact on how Katia is steered as she moves west. It’s possible moisture from this storm could bring heavy rains to the Carolinas early next week.

Katia is currently still east of the Leeward Islands and continues to head northwest at a face pace. The storm is expected to slow down and intensify as it moves north of the islands this weekend. By early next week, we’ll be monitoring just how much of a northward turn the storm will take. Most indications now are that the storm will be steered out to sea, but the disturbance in the Gulf could still entice it farther west. We’ll monitor this closely over the weekend.

Even with Katia well offshore, higher surf and rip currents will be possible on our coast starting on Sunday.

Remember, September 10 marks the peak of Atlantic Hurricane Season. You can always see the latest tropical updates at Hurricanes 101.

This entry was posted
on Friday, September 2nd, 2011 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Wilmington.
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